Review of Earl Shaffer's "Walking With Spring"

            Earl Shaffer was both the first person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail and to write about it. He completed his south-to-north (NOBO or North Bound in Appalachian Trail lingo) trip in 124 days, averaging over sixteen miles a day, backpacking every day and never taking a day off for rest. As he himself noted, “Three years were to go by before Gene Espy duplicated [his] south-to-north trip, and Chester Dziengielewski and Martin Papendick completed the trip north-to-south (SOBO of South Bound in AT ling) the same year. That year was 1951, years before “NOBO”, “SOBO”, and “thru-hiker” became part of the AT nomenclature.

            Shaffer completed his second thru-hike, SOBO, in ninety-days in 1965. “The story that inspired thousands of Appalachian Trail thru-hikers,” about his 1948 thru-hike but with the hindsight of 1965 thru-hike, was privately printed in 1981. He entitled it Walking With Spring because “he had come to the woods to walk with spring” and followed spring’s arrival in the Appalachians as he hiked NOBO from Georgia to Maine.

            The first AT thru-hiker hoped to average twenty miles a day but was willing to settle for fifteen. While backpacking, he calculated that it took him about two thousand steps to cover a mile, or a stride of a little over two and a half feet. He once backpacked four miles in fifty-five minutes, an incredible pace I would be challenged to emulate as my best pace is a mere three miles an hour and I average far less even without a full pack.

            Shaffer was ahead of his time. Just as The National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) was pioneering and perfecting minimum impact camping, which later morphed into Leave No Trace (LNT) principles and practices, Shaffer reflected on his 1948 thru-hike by writing, “When I left, the signs of my presence were so slight that the next rain would remove them. Like the Indians, I say ‘Where I go I leave no sign.’ P. 130.” It would be decades before others would consciously adopt such practices and principles.

            The author was also somewhat prescient, opining in 1981 about development along the AT and writing, “The encroachment that once seemed overwhelming must be stopped if the Appalachian Trail is to survive. P. 110” Here we are, nearly seventy years after Shaffer’s first thru-hike and more than thirty-five years after he published Walking With Spring, and we are still struggling to stop encroachments such as the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

            Reading the 2004 fourth printing of a facsimile reprint of the 1981 edition of Walking With Spring, published by the Appalachian Trail Conference in 1983, was a humbling experience. Shaffer hiked with a heavy and bulky Mountain Troop rucksack weighing an average of forty pounds fully packed, increasing to sixty pounds for the final stretch through the Maine wilderness.  Yet decades before “ultralight backpacking” became a modern mantra, Shaffer’s motto was, “Carry as little as possible but choose that little with care. p. 9.” He later opined, “a long distance hiker must choose between traveling light and not traveling at all. p. 27.” I doubt forty, and certainly not sixty pounds would qualify “as little as possible” by today’s ultralight standards. Yet Shaffer persevered. I doubt I would have fared as well.

Along the C & O Canal Towpath
that also serves as a stretch
of the AT through Maryland

            I would be hard pressed to keep up with Shaffer’s pace even if I did not average in days spent resting, which he did not take. I would be equally challenged to do what he did with the gear available to him, relying instead on aluminum, nylon, and other light weight gear easily available today but not in 1948.

           

           At 152 pages long, Shaffer’s writing pace is a little over 13 miles a page. Evan at that brisk pace, however, I was able to enjoy the Native American legends and lore, local history, and references to American woodsmen such as Boone, Crockett, Carson, Wetzel, and others that he sprinkled throughout his work. Even though sections of the AT have been rerouted since Shaffer’s first thru-hike, and I have never thru-hiked the AT, I have backpacked enough of it to enjoy his descriptions of locations I have myself visited, such as Fontana Dam, OId Rag, The Chesapeake and OhioCanal, Swatara Gap, Hawk Mountain, the Delaware Water Gap, Tammany Mountain, Sunfish Pond, North Conway and Pinkham Notch.

At Old Rag many years ago

            Shaffer’s book is a memoir about his first AT thru-hike, not a detailed section-by-section description of the trail or a technical “how to” guide to thru-hiking the AT. His prose is easy going, not flowery or forced. I am glad I finally got around to reading it and recommend it anyone who loves hiking, especially backpacking the AT.

            My original review was originally published on The Trek and was edited before I posted it here on my own blog.

Do you remember your first time?

After Christmas 1977, four of us met up somewhere in New Hampshire’s White Mountains for a few days of winter backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. It was my second time in the Whites but my first time on the AT. The year before I had spent three or four days cross country skiing, hiking, and mountaineering near Pinkham Notch, but not on the AT.

Mt. Washington above Tuckerman's Ravine in winter

That first trip the year before was spectacular. Three of us enjoyed clear blue skies, cool days, cold nights, and a deep but solid snow pack. The temperature never went above freezing during the day. At night, it dropped into the single digits. In spite of the high winds and white out conditions above tree line that thwarted two different attempts to summit Mt. Washington, I loved the experience.

My second trip was not so spectacular. The winter had been warmer than usual. The snow pack could be measured in inches rather than feet either because less snow had fallen or much of what had fallen had melted. Daytime temperatures were going well above freezing, and night time lows were not dropping below twenty.

At least a couple of us on that second trip were experienced winter backpackers and knew we could not expect to cover much distance every day. Since the daytime temps were going above freezing we opted to carry snowshoes rather than cross country skis. I think I remember the trail being mostly free of snow or else so well packed down from other hikers that we never strapped on our snow shoes.

During our first day and just a few miles from the trail head, we encountered a stream that we thought we could not safely cross. In colder conditions, the stream would have had less water and might even have been frozen over. In summer, we probably could have rock hopped across it. The warmer weather and snow melt, however, had turned that mountain stream into a raging torrent. There was no way we were going to safely cross it. Dejected, we turned around, hiked back to our cars, and made alternate plans, that I think might have included a couple of motel rooms for the night.

An earlier version of this post first appeared on The Trek.

About October’s Header Photo

October’s Header Photo features a hazy and grainy view of Old Rag as seen from the nearby Appalachian Trail in Shenandoah National Park. When I lived in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle the AT in SNP was one of my favorite destinations and I climbed Old Rag at least once. It was an impressive climb considering the low elevation (3,291 ft) and close proximity to Washington, DC. When I say I “Climbed” it I do not mean “climb” in the technical sense. Rather, it was a steep walk up with a little scrambling.